Robert Ortiz Studios Blog

My cousin, once removed, i.e. my first cousin’s son, Orion, came to spend a week with my family and work with me.   I asked him to write about his experience before he left.  His unedited words follow…

Many of you who read this may have encountered situations in which you must use a chainsaw to cut through a felled tree. This happens to me a lot every winter, helping my father keep the quarter mile length of our driveway an open path from the otherwise untouched Appalachian forest that surrounds it and our home. I began thinking if only I knew more to make use of these hardwoods then saw and chop them as firewood for the woodstove. My father operates a contracting business and my experiences with manipulating wood have been with him, using 2x4s, plywood, and metal fasteners. But I was in constant reminder of better technique for when my father built our home when I was a toddler, he made a timber frame out of oak, a superstructure held together by its mortises and tenons and wooden pegs. The integrity of our house appealed to me, and when I thought of how I’d like to use wood, I thought of those methods. My father and I knew of a woodworker who had been working in such a vein for decades, but even more than that, an artist, a master craftsman, our cousin Roberto Ortiz.

Lucky I am to have such relatives that would welcome me into shop and home so warmly. I had not dared think that I would be given a chance to learn this much in a week’s time. Not only Roberto, but his assistant Steve, are both very articulate about their craft, making it understandable to a novice such as myself. And not only were techniques and woods related to me and compared to skills I was already familiar with, such as cooking, but I was afforded the chance to learn by doing.

This, particularly, was a surprise to me, and what I am most grateful for, a chance to get just a little experience. I have been familiar with Roberto’s work as I grew up, with all my family’s visits with his, and knew the value of his work. I thought my time in Ortiz Studios would have been like a week long museum tour, where I could look on but not touch. But I was wrong, and there were many times I was given a test piece or a raw board where there was a margin for error to try my hand at. Through this, I performed rips and cross-cuts, I shaped, joined, and planed…I had an opportunity to use almost every piece of machinery in the shop.

Roberto showed me not only how to use my hands, but my other senses in the work. How to listen to the sounds a machine makes, to make sure you’re using it correctly. How it sounds different if you’re ripping a board too fast and creating chatter or going too slow and burning the cut. How the wood starts to smell burned but not show any mark yet if you’re taking off too much, too fast with a wide-belt sander. You can also tell that by how hot the surface is with your hands.

Roberto tells me that if I were to be a full-time apprentice, much if not most of my time would be taken by sanding, and I did some of that too. You might be surprised but I think I liked the sanding best. I liked the feeling that I was finally revealing the beauty hidden within a board, of a tree, at long last. It fascinated me that I could sand a surface completely smooth as far as my fingertips were concerned, and yet angle the board into the light and find imperfections still. Still places where light did not reflect. Then I would sand more and switch to yet a finer grit. Finally, I could angle a board and watch light dance from one side of a board to another, making every curve of the grain shine.

In a week’s time, I developed a liking for one wood in particular. I was exposed to many exotic woods, from places such as West Africa or Hawaii, and perhaps those of you who read this have those as your favorites but I was stuck most by a wood that I might have found blocking my driveway. What excited me so much is that maybe, just maybe there was as fine a specimen of maple in the woods outside my door as Roberto was making two drawers out of this week. Curly spalted maple it was, and it was a wonder.

I did not even know what curl existed before this week in Ortiz Studios. I still don’t understand exactly what it is but I love the look of it. Ripples exactly like waves, and they change when you move a light across them!…And then the spalting, who knew that worms could help create beauty in wood?

This week gave me but a glimpse into the range and depth of my cousin’s skill but it whetted my appetite to learn more of woodworking. I’d like to learn more of the steps between the forest and the furniture, the harvesting and the milling and the curing. One day I’d like to be able to walk up to a tree in the forest beyond my back door, perhaps a maple tree of which I could see hints of curling, and realize the possibilities within.